Sentencing Panel Refuses to Revive Death Penalties : Won’t Change Rules for Some Federal Cases

Bowing to congressional opposition, the U.S. Sentencing Commission today reluctantly decided that it will not seek to reinstitute the death penalty for certain federal crimes.

On a 4-3 vote, the panel turned down a motion to draft guidelines that would have allowed capital punishment for prison inmates serving life terms who commit murder while they are behind bars.

Commission Chairman William Wilkins, who strongly favors imposing the death penalty for a wide range of violent crimes, voted against the motion, saying later that he feared Congress would reject the guidelines if they became enmeshed in a debate over capital punishment.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said last week that the guidelines would be “dead” if they contain capital punishment provisions. The Sentencing Commission faces an April 13 deadline for submitting the guidelines to Congress, where they will be reviewed first by the House and Senate judiciary committees.

“I tried . . . to assess the political realities that we must face in the Congress,” Wilkins said after the vote on the death penalty provision. He added that Biden’s “thoughts and his position are certainly very important and were considered by me.”

The guidelines are designed to reduce sentence disparity. Currently, federal prisoners committing similar crimes under similar circumstances are given drastically different prison terms.

“I don’t want to lose the opportunity to significantly improve our criminal justice system through these guidelines by injecting the death penalty issue at this time,” Wilkins said.

The commission is a permanent body and Wilkins suggested that the panel might address the issue if and when the regulations take effect.

Commissioner Michael Block, a University of Arizona economist, offered the death penalty motion and said after the vote that he was “disappointed; it’s sad. I try not to play politics with lives.”

Block said the U.S. Bureau of Prisons wants to use capital punishment as a deterrent against inmates serving life terms.

Corrections officials “have problems controlling prisoners (with) nothing to lose,” Block said. “They need the ultimate sanction as a threat.”

Block said that under the Sentencing Commission’s guidelines, an increasing number of violent offenders with several convictions will be serving life terms. In effect, he said, the problem of controlling prisoners will be “exacerbated by our guidelines.”